beautiful ideas of things formed in this account?  Have they one half of the circumstances and incidents of the actions themselves that this man’s eyes were witness to, and which his memory has thus preserved?  He that has read the best accounts of those battles will be surprised to see the particulars of the story so preserved, so nicely and so agreeably described, and will confess what we allege, that the story is inimitably told; and even the great actions of the glorious King GUSTAVUS ADOLPHUS receive a lustre from this man’s relations which the world was never made sensible of before, and which the present age has much wanted of late, in order to give their affections a turn in favour of his late glorious successor.

In the story of our own country’s unnatural wars, he carries on the same spirit.  How effectually does he record the virtues and glorious actions of King Charles the First, at the same time that he frequently enters upon the mistakes of his Majesty’s conduct, and of his friends, which gave his enemies all those fatal advantages against him, which ended in the overthrow of his armies, the loss of his crown and life, and the ruin of the constitution!

In all his accounts he does justice to his enemies, and honours the merit of those whose cause he fought against; and many accounts recorded in his story, are not to be found even in the best histories of those times.

What applause does he give to gallantry of Sir Thomas Fairfax, to his modesty, to his conduct, under which he himself was subdued, and to the justice he did the king’s troops when they laid down their arms!

His description of the Scots troops in the beginning of the war, and the behaviour of the party under the Earl of Holland, who went over against them, are admirable; and his censure of their conduct, who pushed the king upon the quarrel, and then would not let him fight, is no more than what many of the king’s friends (though less knowing as soldiers) have often complained of.

In a word, this work is a confutation of many errors in all the writers upon the subject of our wars in England, and even in that extraordinary history written by the Earl of Clarendon; but the editors were so just that when, near twenty years ago, a person who had written a whole volume in folio, by way of answer to and confutation of Clarendon’s “History of the Rebellion,” would have borrowed the clauses in this account, which clash with that history, and confront it,—­we say the editors were so just as to refuse them.

There can be nothing objected against the general credit of this work, seeing its truth is established upon universal history; and almost all the facts, especially those of moment, are confirmed for their general part by all the writers of those times.  If they are here embellished with particulars, which are nowhere else to be found, that is the beauty we boast of; and that it is that much recommend this work to all the men of sense and judgment that read it.